Page 41 of Face Her Fear

Josie licked her lips. “They seem to think that you’re not who you say you are.”

Sandrine laughed. “Who else would I be? All my credentials are listed on my website. What do they want? Letters from my colleagues? I don’t know what they’re grasping at or why, but it’s absurd.”

“I understand,” Josie said.

“Things with them were fine all week. A bit strained, maybe. They were difficult in their sessions. Didn’t want to open up. Both of them brimming with anger and grief. But they weren’t accusing me of being someone I’m not. Maybe Meg’s death just sent them spiraling. More trauma on top of trauma for everyone. I was trying to stay calm, to try to guide you all through this as best I could while we’re all still here, but maybe I seemed too composed to them.” Sandrine kicked aside a few pieces of shattered ceramics. “Maybe they think that I truly didn’t have any trauma.” A frustrated groan came from deep in her diaphragm. She looked like she wanted to pick up one of the rage-room bats and start smashing things. Josie watched her take a few cleansing breaths before continuing, “You know how trauma changes you. How different would you have been if you’d grown up with your true family, Josie?”

Josie had shared her life story with Sandrine in their second individual session. Every last, ugly, horrifying detail. They’d spoken at length that week about her childhood, but Sandrine hadn’t asked this question before. It was the kind of maddening what-if that Josie turned over in her mind regularly. Every time she spoke to or saw her biological family: twin sister, little brother, mother, and father.

When she was three weeks old, one of the women from her parents’ cleaning service had set their family home on fire. That woman, Lila Jensen, had taken Josie and fled to Denton. Authorities investigating the fire believed tiny Josie had perished. Her family had a funeral for her and mourned her from that day forward. They had no idea that Lila had used infant Josie to get back together with her former boyfriend, Eli Matson. Back then there were no mail-in paternity tests. When Lila showed up on his doorstep almost a year after they broke up and told him that Josie was his, he hadn’t asked questions. Instead, he’d loved Josie fiercely and unconditionally—and later, Lila murdered him for it.

Josie touched the scar that ran from her right ear down along the side of her face to under her chin.

“You wouldn’t have that,” Sandrine pointed out. “Although that scar is nothing compared to what that woman put you through as a child.”

“Yes,” Josie choked. “You’re right.”

Lila had been physically and emotionally abusive. In fact, she seemed to revel in finding new and creative ways to make young Josie suffer. It wasn’t until Eli’s mother—the only grandmother Josie had ever known—Lisette Matson, had wrested custody of Josie away from Lila when Josie was fourteen that Josie knew any peace or normality. Lisette had been a force to be reckoned with, and God help anyone who got in the way of her protecting Josie. She hadn’t been able to use brute force to keep Josie away from Lila, so she’d used her wits. For as kind, generous, and tender as she was, Lisette was just as tough and cunning. Capable of a ruthlessness born of the purest love, Lisette had shown Josie the very meaning of grit and grace.

“I wouldn’t have known my grandmother, though,” Josie said with a smile.

“She made you who you are today,” Sandrine agreed. “Every bit as much as Lila did with her abuse. You know, my mother was a lot like yours—like Lila, I mean, not your biological mother. She didn’t leave me with physical scars. Well, not directly, but she left me with many, many emotional scars and yes, it shaped me.”

“What are you saying?” asked Josie.

“Brian and Nicola are right in one sense. I’m not the person I was as a child, or even as a young woman. The things that happened to me changed me, irrevocably. In some ways, for the worse. But I have devoted my life to making up for it; to helping others heal from similar things. It took a long time and a lot of work to become who I am right now, standing before you. But I am just me.” Something flickered in her eyes and her gaze briefly turned upward, to her left side. Without meeting Josie’s eyes, she added, “I’m Dr. Sandrine Morrow.”

Josie’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out and saw that she had notifications. Sucking in a deep breath, she opened her text messages. Gretchen again.

No one can get in touch with the caretaker. Not answering his phone. No luck with the SAT phone either. But I made contact with Sheriff Shaw. He says he’s never used cameras of any kind up there or on any of his properties. Josie, just what the hell is going on?

Quickly, Josie sent Gretchen a photo of the camera she had found in the kitchen.

I found three in the common areas. There could be others. If Shaw didn’t okay these, that means someone here planted them.

Shit. Still working on those names.Watch your back until we can get to you.

TWENTY-SIX

Outside, Josie could see Taryn and Nicola now shoveling a path to the last cabin. She and Sandrine picked their way along the path the two of them and Alice had shoveled earlier. Their feet slipped and slid on the thin layer of snow remaining. Sandrine hooked her hand inside the crook of Josie’s elbow again and let Josie pull her along. Between transporting Meg’s body yesterday and all the shoveling so far today, Josie’s upper back and shoulders screamed in protest but she didn’t object, instead trying to use the short walk from the rage room to the main house to gather any information she could, now that she was pretty positive that whoever had killed Meg had planted the cameras.

“Sandrine, how well do you know Cooper?”

“Oh, not at all, really. When I rented the place, I was told that he manages this property all year round. He lives in the area. I only met him a few hours before you all did. When I booked these cabins, the property owner told me when and where to meet him and said he’d take care of anything I needed, and he did.”

Except that he’d left them all stranded on the mountain as soon as the weather got bad.

“Did you and he talk much this week?” Josie asked.

“A little. He was always around, on the periphery, helping to keep everything running smoothly. He asked me about some of the stuff we were doing. Meditation. Yoga. He wanted to know what that had to do with ‘head stuff.’ I tried to explain the mind–body connection but I’m not sure he got it.”

“Did he ever make you feel uncomfortable?” Josie continued. “Or say or do anything you found inappropriate, no matter how small?”

Sandrine stopped in her tracks, forcing Josie to pause as well. “Why are you asking me these things, Josie?”

Josie was not prepared to tell Sandrine about the cameras, but the more she considered it, the more it made sense that Cooper might be the one who had planted all the cameras in the main house. That was where he spent most of his time. It would have been easy for him to place them around and then discreetly change the SD cards. No one would have noticed. But again, she wondered, if he was behind the cameras, what was he trying to capture? A bunch of people doing a sun salutation? Two people sitting on chairs talking for an hour? Sandrine cooking healthy meals while Taryn picked her brain about trauma-based treatments? Even if the cameras had an audio component and he had illegally taped conversations without anyone’s permission, what was he hoping to hear? A half dozen horror stories about the depth of human depravity? Tales of how bad luck spared no one? Did he have a perverse fixation with other people’s pain?

“Cooper didn’t come back,” Josie answered. “I can’t help but wonder if there’s more to it than just the weather.”

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